


cover scenes

by reminiscence



Category: Dear Mr. M - Herman Koch
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen, Speculation, ffn challenge: another mega prompts challenge, ffn challenge: becoming the tamer king challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-09 19:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8909185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: It's the perfect story and, like all perfect stories, it replaces the truth.





	1. perfect yet incomplete

They have the perfect story there. The perfect motive. Except it just isn't true and no amount of circumstantial evidence can plaster the crime on them. Still, their names are beautifully coated in slime and mud and carved into immortal stone… But at least they don't have to change their names to hide from the world. It's the names that have changed, instead. The retelling that fourty years ago was a perverse attempt to hide the truth but is now the truth itself: truth that has shaved the tale to its finest points and then woven conjecture into the holes.


	2. truth is cheap

Truth is cheap, fourty years later. He wonders if the man even cares, upstairs with his quaint little family and declining popularity… Though maybe the declining popularity is more an attraction than a deterrent. A prequel to his first, most popular book. The sort of thing called for once. Might wind up being his revival.

Or perhaps the truth will unravel the tale and he'll find himself caught in that reel. That's fine too but now that they are so close – downstairs and upstairs neighbours – he wants to know.

But he doesn't want to ask, because that means admission too


	3. before the truth dies

People wound have run like crazy for the reels in that projector, but that was fourty years ago. Nobody really cares now. Except for him. Maybe.

Maybe he's just forcing the man to care: about the truth of the forgery he wrote. Because that's the gospel now. Will stay the mainstream long after memories fade. The reels that say otherwise will disappear into a dusty corner when he dies and he wants someone to understand the truth…

And what does it even matter, fourty years later? Why does it have such a grip?

But the tale's always there, reminding him.


	4. lengthy cliffhangers

It turns out he's been waiting for this chance for fourty years. He hasn't realised it, because like all the novels that came after, he thought it's one that's been written, published, and put on the shelves and eventually decline. But for some reason, it doesn't decline. It stays and floats and it keeps him afloat while his newer stories splutter and never quite take off. It's not his writing, in the end. He realises it when the holes in the story are finally filled in, when his head can swim and his heart can pay its dues and settle.


	5. weaving a tale

Maybe, if it hadn’t been for that fateful meeting, the story would never have taken off. A dead man gave a surprising amount of life to his tale and it still lives, fourty years after the fact and even now when the other side of the truth is right in front of him – but, in honesty, it’s not the important side. He already knows he wrote a lie but he advocates it because the truth puts too much focus on the undesirable characters and the centre-pieces become red herrings. It’s life, he knows, and not picturesque – but a tale is.


	6. conjectures and fairytales

Lack of proof is what makes it a story. He knows the truth and the main players know the truth (or maybe just one of them) and maybe even some of their friends know the truth as well, but nobody calls him out on it. He waits the first few days, weeks and years but then time passes and he stops waiting – and like all strong surprises, they come when he least expects it. He’s a washed up has been by then when his tale’s credibility is questioned and sees all the proof except his own memories – and those stay.


	7. unnecessary spoilers

He’s not a man who interacts with his neighbours. Perhaps that’s why it takes the downstairs one falling into his lap before he realises who the other is. And a part of him wants to wildly laugh when he does realise, because here’s been the rest of that story right under his nose – and yet, that book’s been closed and dusted a long time ago. He’s said no to sequels and prequels and spin-offs. He made his choice the day he sent the truth off the bridge and wrote the glorified eye – but the tapes capture his curious mind anyway.


	8. revenge served cold

He is surprised by the man, in the end. The intensity with which he felt that gaze before and yet he simply watches. Watches his reaction. Watches the way the world tilts: the way the dregs of his career up and splashes cooled off oil. Or – the oil does burn: him. Others climb up their ladders without a scratch and he’s painted as this poor man who’s at the end of his rope – and he is, and this revelation has come too late as well and maybe he shouldn’t be surprised, because revenge is a dish best served cold, right?


	9. angel of death

Is he happy? Or sad? Or simply relieved he doesn’t have to hide anymore? It’s silly anyway, because it’s not confession that cleanses his soul – but that would be too poetic for a cruel man like him, a man who had to give life to his tale by pouring a vat of blood all over it, and can’t manage otherwise. But there’s no lust in his soul. Only exhaustion. He’s tired and he wants to give it up and now he can. Perhaps she shall only feel relieved – and the angel comes at a perfect time, to end the tale.


	10. the final end

He feels cheated out of a good ending in the end and he doesn’t even know what constitutes one. He’s floundered. He’s watched the other. Gone out of his way to orchestrate this meeting – and for what? He’s taken the long way around. He knows it. He’s rolled unloaded dice and they finally led here as though it’s unavoidable, like it’s fate. But this ending… It tells him nothing and offers nothing. It’s all for Mr. M instead. he sees the end of his tale but he tells no-one – and for the main characters… they get no sequel or rewrite.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for:
> 
> The Becoming the Tamer King Challenge, Data Forest Task  
> Another Mega Prompts Challenge, various word prompts


End file.
